Kavalan proverbs

posted by Kaihsu Tai on November 16th, 2007

My grandmother’s grandmother was said to be a Kavalan. Recently, a dictionary of the Kavalan language appeared (ISBN 978-986-00-6993-8). On pages 52 and 53, there are some proverbs (narrated by Ulaw Pan, reinterpreted by Abas, and recorded by Paul Li):

Alright, you do keep quiet, please!
I shall talk to you.
Because I shall talk to you[:] do not forget about the old teachings.
No matter what other people do to us, let’s not get angry.
No matter what other people say to us, do not feel sad.
No matter how other people behave to us, we should be nice to them in our heart.
Wherever we go, we should not be mischievous but behave ourselves.
You should watch out [for] what might happen.
We should be careful when we go to other peopleâ€™s place.

3 Comments

Not really. There are only hundreds of speakers of Kavalan left today (if even that many), so it is not the focus of the work of the Bible Society in Taiwan. There are Bible translations in other indigenous Formosan languages though, several of them recent publications, as people there get more confident of their mother tongues.

According to the Bible Society in Taiwan, the native-language translations of the Bible already published are these nine: Taiwanese (Amoy), 'Amis (Pangcah), Paiwan, Bunun, Atayal (Tayal), Truku (Taroko), Tao (Yami), Rukai, and Hakka. I recently met John Whitehorn of the United Reformed Church, who had a hand in the Paiwan translation.